Illuvium to release third blockchain game in early 2023

Tomorrow, Australian blockchain game studio Illuvium will release the alpha version of Illuvium: Zero.

Zero, open to approximately 6,500 Illuvium land NFT owners on mobile and PC, joins the team’s two existing games. The open-world monster battle Illuvium: Arena and Illuvium: Overworld, the last of which launched in December, are in beta testing. While access to all three is currently limited, the company expects to fully open its universe to the public in mid-2023.

Zero is a building game in which players can develop and manage their “digital industrial complex”. Among the features, land-based NFT owners will be able to earn on their NFTs by mining fuel and selling it on the game’s marketplace.

Built using Unreal Engine 5 on the ImmutableX blockchain, Illuvium, an Australian company, wants to create a product that can compete with off-chain games.

Compete with the mainstream

Web3 games have struggled to compete with popular games. Some of the best triple AAA games attract millions of players a day, while even the most popular blockchain games often struggle to reach that number in a month.

Lack of interest in game content, dislike of crypto, and difficult onboarding processes have been cited as reasons for the lack of interest. Some of the best games currently available still have very limited gameplay, which appeals to web-3 game enthusiasts thanks to the financial products built into the games, such as the ability to earn yield and cash out tokens.

More ambitious game studios that have announced plans to create full-fledged MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) may take years to release a full-fledged product.

And while some of the top game studios like Square Enix have moved to web gaming, most of them are still wary of it. Mojang Studios and Rockstar Games, the makers of Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto respectively, have banned creators from using NFTs on their game servers.

Leading figures such as the creators of Steam, Valve and Microsoft are also critical of the use of NFTs and blockchain in games.